There are about 200 species of woodpeckers and they are found world-wide except for Australia, Madagascar, New Zealand and the poles. The smallest woodpecker (that we know of right now) is the bar-breasted piculet which is about 3 inches long and lives in the Amazon rainforest.
At up to 23 inches long, the largest member of the family is the Great Slaty Woodpecker found across southern Asia.
Although the Imperial Woodpecker once found in Mexico is one inch larger, it is now believed to be extinct...
along with the slightly smaller Ivory-billed Woodpecker once found across the southeastern U.S.
Although there have been recent possible reports that a few individual Ivory-billed survivors may have been spotted, there have been no confirmations.
Woodpeckers have many adaptations for their woodpecking lifestyle. "The 'woodpecker niche' is based on digging holes in live wood and on prying off pieces of bark. That means dependable food sources all year round in the form of sap, insects living under bark, and insects burrowing into wood. It also means an excellent place for a nest, since a hole in a tree affords protection from wind, rain, predators, and temperature fluctuations...
These include a chisel-like bill, nostrils protected with feathers to keep out sawdust, a thick skull, strong head and neck muscles, and a hinge between the base of the bill and the front of the skull to help spread the shock of pounding...Another set of adaptations are those for perching vertically on bark, such as a stiff tail to press against bark as a brace,
strong muscles for manipulating the tail, short legs, and long, curved toes...The third adaptation is an extremely long and extensible tongue, fully as long as our own tongues in some woodpeckers. Once a woodpecker has broken into the tunnel system of wood-dwelling insects at one point, the bird uses its tongue to lick out many branches of the system without having to drill a new hole for each branch...Finally, woodpeckers have tough skins to withstand insect bites plus the stresses from pounding and from strong muscles." (an excerpt from
The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond.)
However, not all woodpeckers have all of these adaptations; some don't have a stiff tail and not all woodpeckers have equal excavating skills. Sapsuckers are hard wood specialists.
And defying the typical woodpecker image, there are even three ground-dwelling woodpeckers. The aptly named Ground Woodpecker builds its nest in a tunnel in a stream bank and is an ant specialist.
Ground Woodpecker found in southern Africa Source:
Wikipedia
More typical species include the blond-crested woodpecker from South America...
members of the flicker group, such as the Chilean Flicker...
and the Greater Flameback from tropical Asia.
Woodpeckers are a very interesting group of birds.
